The wives join the Campaign 2012 ad wars

The Republican group beat-down of Newt Gingrich continued Wednesday — with the candidates wives leading the soft-focus charge in a couple of new ads.

No, Anita Perry and Ann Romney don’t beat on Newt, or anyone else. They just talk about their own hubbies. (For now, we’ll ignore the nearly identical cableknit sweaters that Ann and Mitt are wearing in one image in their their ad, circa 1973….but we won’t forget.)

That aside, the message here ain’t that subtle to the conservative Iowans who dominate the GOP primary: Both Ann Romney and Anita Perry have been married to their respective candidate husbands for a combined 71 years. They have curlers older than the 11-year-old Callista-Newt Gingrich marriage, which both ads stop short of saying, “His THIRD!”

We’ll call this Spouse-Ad phenomenon a gen-u-ine trend once we see Ron Paul’s wife in an ad. And what about some love for Marcus Bachmann? C’mon Marcus. Hubbies can do soft-focus testimonials, too.

Here’s Perry’s ad called (pick up your sledgehammer of subtlety) “American Story.” It’s running both nationally on cable and in Iowa:

And here’s Romney’s bit called, ahem, “Character.” Ann muses that “it’s so important to understand the character of a person. To me, that makes a huge difference. Maybe some voters, it doesn’t. But for me, it makes a huge difference.”